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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23040544">i like too much the rain</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/commanderdameron/pseuds/commanderdameron'>commanderdameron</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BB-8 as a teenager, F/M, because it is SOLELY in service of the Rey/Poe endgame, idk y'all we'll see where life takes us, not sure whether I'm coming back to this one?, there's some Rey/Ben especially at first but I didn't want to tag it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:14:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,092</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23040544</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/commanderdameron/pseuds/commanderdameron</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey Kenobi is nearly 30, and she has very little to show for it. She's doing nothing with her degree, she's been dating her high school sweetheart for 12 years, and she's surrounded by high school friends who have passed her by (and are all too passive-aggressive to say so). When she meets and befriends a teenager named Beatrice Dameron, she begins to more seriously question whether her old life is something she still wants to hang on to.</p><p>--</p><p>This fic is a loose adaptation of the 2014 movie <i>Laggies</i>.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>BB-8 &amp; Rey, Poe Dameron/Rey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title taken from “Eighteen is Over the Hill” by The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            “I know something you don’t know.”</p><p>            Rey looked up from her phone and squinted at her friend Mashra, whose announcement marked her fifteen-minutes-late arrival to their lunch date.</p><p>            Their lunch date to plan last-minute details of Mashra’s wedding, which was only two days away.</p><p>            When it became clear that Mashra was going to say nothing of her tardiness, Rey found enough energy to summon a mildly interested, “Do tell.”</p><p>            Mashra didn’t seem to notice anything amiss in Rey’s mood; she was too eager to reveal her secret, leaning forward in her seat and taking one of Rey’s hands between her own. “Ben’s going to propose. At the wedding. Isn’t that amazing?”</p><p>            She grinned eagerly before Rey could even answer, a further illustration of what Rey already knew to be true—the only valid answer was, “Wow, it is.” Which it was, obviously. She and Ben Solo had been together since high school, so it was… it was great. Good and right and exactly where she’d wanted to end up for the longest time.</p><p>            “He asked me for my permission, he didn’t want to do it if I felt like it would ruin my big moment. Isn’t that so sweet?”</p><p>            Rey felt herself smiling, perhaps more to avoid smirking than anything else—Ben had always thought that Mashra took everything too personally. If he’d asked, it was more about covering his and Rey’s asses than it was about courtesy to Mashra.</p><p>            (Which Rey had to appreciate.)</p><p>            Suddenly, she realized that Mashra was still gushing over the news. “… and I’m just really excited for you, Rey. You’ll finally be one of us!”</p><p>            “One of… you,” Rey said carefully.</p><p>            She and Mashra had been friends since high school; <em>all</em> of their friends had been friends since high school, if not longer. A little over a decade out, it seemed strange to be thinking of any one of them as an outsider.</p><p>            Mashra shrugged. “Oh, you know. Everyone else is married already, and Ivan and I are tying the knot soon. It just seems like it’s time for you and Ben to get it over with already. Stop being kids who play house, you know.”</p><p>            Rey swallowed nervously and glanced away, uncertain of what to say; as her eyes scanned the room, she spotted their server, peering over from the hostess stand and trying to assess whether Rey and Mashra were ready to order. <em>Oh, thank God</em>. She gave the vague nod of, <em>Yes, we’re ready</em>, and asked Mashra whether she’d ever had the restaurant’s street tacos.</p><p>            Frankly, Mashra was not the first person to suggest that Rey’s life was not quite up to par with the lives of their friends, and not only because she and Ben still weren’t engaged. No, there was her job—“hey, it pays enough to cover my loan payments,” she had said on more than one occasion. Never mind that her boss was an asshole who over-priced every single item that came into his second-hand store; he paid her alright, and sometimes she’d make up fictional sales just to make up some of the difference for the customers.</p><p>            And with her job came arguments about college and grad school—how Rey had leapt from major to major for years before settling on psychology, and then she had gotten a Master’s in social work… only to decide that she did not want to be a social worker. But she had made no progress on figuring out what she <em>did</em> want to be, either.</p><p>            The word sitting on the edge of her friends’ tongues was “pathetic.” And yes, maybe her life <em>was</em> pathetic.</p><p>            In that respect, Ben was something of a relief. They’d never had to take a break, even when they were at college a few hours apart, and he visited her every other weekend during her Master’s. He was dependable and consistent, and she was lucky to have found him.</p><p>            Of course, that didn’t mean that she felt great about the prospect of a proposal.</p><p>            He was just so… Well, that was to say…</p><p>            As much as she resented herself for it, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wouldn’t particularly want to marry him if she had spent her 20s doing even a minimal amount of dating around.</p><p>            But what should that matter? Like Mashra had said—Rey and Ben were finally going to stop playing house, and Rey wanted to believe that it would be the best thing that had ever happened to her.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            Perhaps it partially seemed weird, the idea of marrying Ben Solo, because Rey had started dating him all those years ago just because she kinda wished that his mom was her mom.</p><p>            Mind you, Ben Kenobi had been a wonderful foster father, and most of the kids at school had been surprisingly chill about her whole foster kid situation. Her friends had particularly been into the opportunity to venture into the creepy house of “Old Man Kenobi,” who, they were disappointed to discover, was not so much creepy as he was just sad—still mourning the tragic death of his wife and young daughter decades after the car accident that took their lives but spared him.</p><p>            But Rey had craved a mother in a way that she had always been too reserved and too tomboyish to admit to, and Leia had been a perfect mother for a daughter like that. Frankly, at almost 30, Rey still didn’t understand the precise relationship arrangement that Leia and Ben’s father, Han, were functioning in; they no longer lived together, but they often hosted Rey and Ben for dinner and continued to behave, in so many ways, as a couple. Hell, for all Rey knew, they were married and just living across town from one another.</p><p>            It was baffling to Rey, and no doubt even more so to Ben, although she had never discussed it with him. But the gist was that Rey witnessed this dynamic, saw Leia’s independence and drive and perfectly-baked homemade brownies, and she knew she wanted that woman as a role model in her life.</p><p>            She had fallen for Ben, shared countless heart-to-hearts with Leia, spent a few years in Han’s bowling league. (He supposedly participated ironically, but Rey was skeptical.) Maybe she and Ben weren’t married, but Rey had long been part of the family.</p><p>            “Rey, isn’t your birthday coming up?” Leia asked over dinner that night.</p><p>            “Oh, yes, I… suppose it is. I hadn’t even thought about it with all of the prep for Mashra’s wedding.”</p><p>            “Do you two have anything special planned?”</p><p>            Ben gave his mother a small smile. “Not particularly. Rey isn’t one for celebrations, remember, Mom?”</p><p>            “Yes, yes, of course I do. I’m not either, so I understand. I just wasn’t sure whether you two might be planning to make a bigger deal out of 30.”</p><p>            “The other parents tell us that 30 is some big landmark when kids actually become adults,” Han said, sharing a conspiratorial eye roll with Rey.</p><p>            Rey chuckled and tried to smile, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “That’s a relief. I’d been wondering when that was going to happen.”</p><p>            “Maybe visiting that career counselor is next,” Ben offered; he was trying – and failing – to keep his tone light.</p><p>            She felt her stomach twist as her irritation immediately rose. In the years since her Master’s, Rey had been to a few career counselors, and their input had been useless; they seemed more interested in helping her to find an “acceptable” job than they were in helping her to find the career that was right for her. And if she wasn’t going to be happy in the career that they pushed her into, then she didn’t understand why she couldn’t just keep the job she had.</p><p>            Ben disagreed, and it was mainly because he never had a good or consistent explanation for <em>why</em> that Rey knew the truth: he thought her job was beneath her, beneath <em>him</em>. After all, she saw the way he flinched each time they met new people and she revealed that she worked at a second-hand store. It hadn’t passed her notice that the first time she met his coworkers, <em>none</em> of them knew what she did.</p><p>            “How many times do I have to tell you I’m fine where I am, Ben?” God, the fact that he was bringing this up in front of his parents was even worse; he knew that she didn’t like to argue in front of them.</p><p>            “I know, I know, it’s just that you complain so much about your boss…”</p><p>            “Everyone we <em>know</em> hates their bosses. You hate your boss and I’ve never told you to quit.”</p><p>            They stared at each other in silence, Rey daring him to try to justify himself. He wouldn’t, not in front of his parents, but probably not when they got home that night either. Not when his justification would have been, <em>That’s because everyone else has a real job</em>.</p><p>            Funny, that only the folks with legitimate jobs were allowed to settle for a workplace environment that they hated.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            Mashra’s wedding genuinely was beautiful, and Rey – to her own surprise – found herself lightly dabbing at her eyes with the monogrammed handkerchief that had been part of Mashra’s personalized gift bags for each of her bridesmaids.</p><p>            The reception, on the other hand…</p><p>            All of their friends had gotten married, but so far, none of them had kids. That said, two of the couples had gotten pregnant around the same time (because, by their own reporting, it was the <em>couples</em> who were pregnant, not the women actually carrying the growing fetuses), and they were both now at about seven months, making children a large topic of conversation at the wedding party table.</p><p>            “We want to have at least three,” Mashra said eagerly, “So we started trying about two months ago. No luck yet, but all the women in my family are very fertile, so it’s only a matter of time.”</p><p>            Rey tried not to audibly gag over her friends sincerely discussing their family fertility history. She had decided in middle school that she didn’t want to have children—regardless of the rhetoric around women’s bodies being “made to carry children,” she felt pretty fervently that <em>her</em> body was <em>not</em> meant for that burden. It had been 15 years, and her feelings hadn’t changed.</p><p>            She and Ben hadn’t discussed it right away – obviously, they were in high school and very much not thinking about parenting at the time – but she’d opened up to him about her resistance to motherhood when they were in college. He’d been disappointed, but he’d understood.</p><p>            “Ben, Rey, how about you? When are you guys having kids?”</p><p>            “Oh, we’re not,” Rey said, at the same time Ben said, “We haven’t decided yet.”</p><p>            Rey twisted in her chair to look at Ben, who seemed completely unfazed. “What is there to decide?”</p><p>            “I mean, c’mon, Rey,” he said, and at least now he had the decency to sound uncomfortable. “No one wants kids when they’re in college, but I think it’s fair to say that we both deserve to weigh our options now that we’re older.”</p><p>            “When I say that I don’t want a child growing in my uterus, I feel like that severely limits our options, Ben.”</p><p>            “I felt the exact same way,” Samantha – the wife in one of the pregnant couples – said, cradling her belly gently with one hand. “I was so certain that I didn’t want to carry, but all of that went away as soon as I got pregnant. These past months have been the most magical of my whole life.”</p><p>            Rey immediately remembered all of the times that Samantha had shown up to girls’ nights in the past several months and complained desperately about some symptom of pregnancy or another. The most absurd part of it all was that, in the moment, her friend might be willfully forgetting all of the shit that the kid had already put her through. Rey didn’t understand it, this culturally-accepted fiction that pregnancy-induced agony was something to enjoy and aspire to.</p><p>            She didn’t bring up any of Samantha’s miseries. Instead she smiled courteously and said, “Maybe you’re right.”</p><p>            Ben rested his hand on her leg and squeezed gently.</p><p>            Maybe it was that moment, hanging over her head as she and Ben were on the dance floor later that night. Maybe it was their fights about her job or the way she <em>did</em> feel like an outsider amongst her friends, all of a sudden, and she couldn’t have said whether she wanted to feel like an insider.</p><p>            He made to get down on one knee, and she stopped him, said, “Hang on, I need to pee.”</p><p>            “What, now?” he asked, glancing around in confusion.</p><p>            “Yeah, I feel like my bladder’s about to burst, I’m really sorry.”</p><p>            Leaving the reception hall, Rey passed up the restrooms, went straight to the valet, and drove away.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            She was across town before she realized that she didn’t know where she was driving to. All of her friends were at Mashra’s wedding. She didn’t want to go home. Her foster father would be asleep, and she didn’t want to frighten or worry him by letting herself in or by calling to announce that she was coming.</p><p>            Feeling frustrated and helpless, Rey pulled into the parking lot of a 24-hour Target. Maybe she could at least waste an hour wandering around in there.</p><p>            As she neared the door, she caught sight of a group of teenagers loitering against the far wall. She and her friends had spent their fair share of time in parking lots in high school, and the sight of them laughing and skating around made her smile softly. It didn’t matter how things had changed; she felt a lot of love for them in that moment, for the way they had been then.</p><p>            One of the teens saw Rey and redirected the course of her skateboard. “Hey, excuse me miss!”</p><p>            Rey knew where this was going at once, but she still raised her eyebrows and cocked her head curiously as the girl reached her. “Can I help you?”</p><p>            “Yeah, my, uh… my friends and I were having a little party and we ran out of beer, so we came over here to pick up a few more six-packs, but we all left our IDs back at Artie’s house.” She pointed needlessly at one of the guys, who was lying back on one of the large red Target balls scattered along the edge of the sidewalk. “Is there any chance you could help us out?”</p><p>            Another reason Rey shouldn’t be a mother—her response to this request.</p><p>            She hesitated for a fraction of a second, looking at the kid for a moment, before saying, “Yeah, y’know what, someone did this for me a few times, so I guess it’s time to pay it forward. On one condition.”</p><p>            “What is it?” the girl asked warily.</p><p>            “I’m going to need one of you to come in with me and pretend to be my kid sibling.”</p><p>            “Is that some kind of weird fetish thing?”</p><p>            Rey was torn between amusement and disgust. “No. It’s a trick I learned when I was your age. Make it look like I’m stocking up on some beer for <em>my</em> friends, but my kid sister made me bring her along so that she could pick up some tampons or whatever… And then, Jesus Christ, why are you insisting on looking at clothes? The five-dollar movie bin? Next thing you know we’ve been in there for 20 minutes, I’m annoyed at you because my friends are waiting for me…”</p><p>            “Huh.” The girl assessed Rey. “Still kind of sounds like a fetish thing—”</p><p>            “It’s not a fetish thing,” Rey muttered.</p><p>            “—but I have to admit it’s a good idea. Okay, I’ll come in with you.”</p><p>            She skated back to her friends and said, “Hey guys, she’s going to help us out, but I’m going to go in with her to make it look less suspicious.”</p><p>            “Nice, told you she looked cool,” the aforementioned Artie said.</p><p>            The girl left her skateboard with her friends and returned to Rey.</p><p>            “So what do I call you, kid?” Rey asked as they strode through the sliding doors.</p><p>            “I’m BeeBee.”</p><p>            Rey furrowed her brow. “As in gun?”</p><p>            “No, no.” BeeBee laughed. “My name is Beatrice, but my dad always called me BeeBee when I was little until it just sort of stuck. Only grown-ups call me Beatrice.”</p><p>            “And I’m not a grown-up?” Rey asked as BeeBee stopped to look at a hat. </p><p>            “Obviously you are, you’re just… a cool grown-up. And I’m not saying that because of the… y’know,” she said, gesturing vaguely around the store. “You just give off a good vibe. Like, you come with all of the ‘older and wiser’ benefits but none of the pretention.”</p><p>            “Good to know,” Rey chuckled. And absurd as it was, it made her feel a little better.</p><p>            While they circled their way through the store, BeeBee kept them talking, telling Rey about all of her friends outside and recounting tales of less successful beer runs.</p><p>            “There was one time we accidentally asked an off-duty cop, and we had to book it out of there so fast… Luckily Artie had his dad’s car that night, and I guess the cop didn’t care enough to follow up on a license plate because we never heard anything about it. Oh, hang on, I actually do need some more deodorant.”</p><p>            BeeBee had mentioned that she was an only child, but she played the part of younger sister well, asking Rey if she wouldn’t mind getting her a pack of gum.</p><p>            “You’re spending like 20 dollars, what’s one more?” Rey retorted, taking on the best exasperated tone she could muster. She even made eye contact with the cashier, shook her head and rolled her eyes as though they were in on some joke about how ridiculous teenagers were.</p><p>            “I would have let you have a stick,” BeeBee muttered.</p><p>            “I don’t want a stick, I want to get home. My friends have got to be wondering about me by now.”</p><p>            The theatrics were a delight, even if a little ridiculous, and Rey found herself having more fun than she had had in a very long time.</p><p>            When they emerged triumphant, BeeBee’s friends eagerly thanked Rey for her help, and Rey was gracious, but antsy, self-conscious now that her usefulness had run out.</p><p>            As she turned to retreat to her car, though, BeeBee said, “Hey, Rey, hang on. Don’t you wanna enjoy some of our spoils?”</p><p>            “Oh, uh…” Rey glanced at the faces of the kids, all of whom were looking at her expectantly. She considered her other options—go home, go to a bar, find some other parking lot or 24-hour store to loiter in. “Yeah, okay. I guess I could hang for a bit.”</p><p>            “Cool,” BeeBee grinned eagerly. “There’s this playground a few blocks away that we like to hang at, we were going to board over if you wanted to just come with us.”</p><p>            So Rey found herself leaving her car in the Target parking lot and walking over to a playground with six teenagers. BeeBee was laughing with all of them, her attention very much diverted away from Rey now that they were in the larger group. And perhaps Rey should have felt out of place, but instead, she found herself reveling in the lack of judgment. The boy who BeeBee had pointed out, Artie, asked, “So what do you do?” and the kids were the first people to ever respond, “Oh, cool!” when Rey explained her job at the second-hand shop downtown.</p><p>            “I can’t wait ‘til I graduate so that I can do something weird like that,” a kid named CeCe said.</p><p>            “Yeah, but good luck getting another cent from your dad if you decide not to go to college,” Artie said.</p><p>            “All our parents say that, but I think their dad is the only one who actually means it,” BeeBee explained to Rey. Her tone was soft, sympathetic for the friend with a hard-ass dad.</p><p>            In the decade since she was a teenager, there was something about high school-era friendships that Rey had completely forgotten about—they were so unabashedly blatant about the interpersonal dynamics that they were navigating within the group at a given time. They kept splintering off and then coming back together again, at no point coordinating these things—it just sort of happened.</p><p>            When the hell had Rey and her friends developed a sense of obligation that none of them could be closer than any others? And the tense, overly-polite resentful attitude that came with any secrets being shared between only two or three?</p><p>            “You guys are really wonderful,” Rey told BeeBee at one point, when they found themselves splitting a bag of chips alone.</p><p>            BeeBee smirked. “Yeah, we kinda are.”</p><p>            “I’m getting a little worried about Artie, though, is he alright?”</p><p>            While most of the kids had been nursing one beer the whole night, Artie had downed several, and he had been lying on top of a picnic table alone for approximately half an hour.</p><p>            “Eh, he’s… fine. His parents are getting divorced, and his dad’s been getting pretty nasty with his mom. It’s sorta put him in the middle, and it’s been a little rough.”</p><p>            Rey frowned. “That sounds a lot rough.”</p><p>            “Yeah, but y’know, he’s been seeing a therapist, and we’re… we’re there for him, obviously. Both to talk if he needs it and to keep an eye on him when he gets like this.”</p><p>            “How often does he get like this?”</p><p>            BeeBee raised her eyebrows at Rey. “I know you’re a grown-up but you don’t have to, like, feel obligated to fret over him just because he’s been drinking lately.”</p><p>            “I don’t have to be a grown-up to worry about an unhappy teenager, BeeBee.”</p><p>            And the girl gave Rey a soft smile, nudged her shoulder with her own. “Damn, you <em>are</em> cool. I knew we were right about you.”</p><p>            Not long after, the kids’ curfews were coming up, but BeeBee surprised Rey once again.</p><p>            “Hey, Rey, take this.”</p><p>            Rey nearly dropped the small object that the teen threw at her; looking down, she was surprised to see a flip phone in her hand.</p><p>            “My number’s on speed dial there, if you ever want to hang out again.”</p><p>            “Do kids just give out their numbers on burner phones now?” Rey asked incredulously.</p><p>            “No, I just have the one, but you can borrow it. Y’know, just until I see you again.”</p><p>            Rey considered the phone before pocketing it. “I’m just… not going to ask why you bother to have a burner phone.”</p><p>            “Probably for the best, yeah.” BeeBee grinned. “See you soon, Rey.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            “Where the hell have you been?”</p><p>            Rey finally walked into her apartment at 5:30 in the morning, after driving around for hours and catching up on some of her podcasts. She’d expected Ben to be asleep, but he was up waiting for her.</p><p>            “Oh my God, I didn’t expect you to still be up, babe, I’m sorry.”</p><p>            “I was worried about you, why the hell wouldn’t I be awake? You haven’t answered any of my texts or calls. For all I knew you could have died.”</p><p>            “But I didn’t die, see?” Rey held out her arms to illustrate her continued liveliness.</p><p>            He clearly couldn’t tell whether he was meant to be taking her seriously, because he stared at her blankly for several seconds before asking, “But where <em>were</em> you, Rey? You didn’t tell anyone that you were leaving, or where you were going…” He ran his hand through his hair in exasperation. “I would have left with you if you wanted to go.”</p><p>            “I know, I know, I just…” Rey heaved a sigh. She had not been planning on having this conversation the moment she returned home, but perhaps she should have expected it. “I’ve been feeling so out of place recently, Ben, and it all came to a head for me last night. Like, I don’t feel like a kid anymore, but I feel like our friends see me that way. I feel like you see me that way, sometimes. And I don’t know, at the reception last night I just felt all of that closing in on me and I started to wonder why you even wanted to be with me and why our friends even bother to talk to me and just… does any of this make any sense?”</p><p>            “Yeah, yeah, it makes sense.” Ben’s expression had softened exponentially and now he crossed the room to Rey, wrapping his arms around her. “Of course I don’t see you as a kid, babe. It’s just that I… I think of how talented you are and how you could change the world and I just want to see you do those things. All of our friends do. We just want you to be the best you can be, because we love you.”</p><p>            Rey tried to feel the good in his words, and not the problematic piece of them—that this was, again, about what others wanted <em>for</em> her, rather than what <em>she</em> wanted.</p><p>            She swallowed hard, allowing herself to settle into his hug. “I know that. I do.”</p><p>            “Look,” Ben said after a few moments, pulling himself out of the hug but cradling her arms in his hands. “I was honestly kind of nervous that you ran off because you realized that I was going to propose, but I can imagine that that was probably the last thing you wanted, when you were feeling that way. But I want to marry you. Even if this isn’t the perfect circumstances, I’m saying it—we should get married, babe.”</p><p>            Rey considered her boyfriend, and she tried very hard to convince herself that she wasn’t settling when she nodded and murmured, “Yes.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            The next day, BeeBee’s burner phone rang.</p><p>            Rey nearly didn’t pick it up; as much as she had enjoyed herself that night, in the light of day, she felt understandably self-conscious about how she had so casually hung out with a group of minors – for <em>hours</em> – after buying them alcohol. All because she’d been a bit sad.</p><p>            Instead, though: “Hello?”</p><p>            “Rey, it’s me. Can I ask you a favor?”</p><p>            “Depends on what it is.”</p><p>            “It’s pretty big.”</p><p>            “Go on, BeeBee.”</p><p>            “Could you pretend to be my mom for a meeting with my bio teacher?”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            “Damn, you really look like a mom. And you even wore a fake ring,” BeeBee said with a grin. “Way to commit, Rey!”</p><p>            Glancing down at her brand-new engagement ring, and uncertain how to reply, Rey just whispered, “What exactly did you do that I’m getting you out of?”</p><p>            “I <em>barely</em> did <em>anything</em>,” BeeBee said. At Rey’s face, she conceded, “I merely told my teacher that I wouldn’t participate in tomorrow’s frog dissection.”</p><p>            Rey laughed. “I don’t think they send conscientious objectors to the office, BeeBee.”</p><p>            “I mean…” The girl shrugged bashfully. “There might have been some standing on the table and ripping up of course materials as I announced that our biology class was useless to my future plans to be a trapeze artist in the circus.”</p><p>            “Mmm, I see. Things are starting to become clear.”</p><p>            BeeBee pointedly looked down at the floor, as though looking at Rey would somehow make her feel guilty.</p><p>            “I hope you didn’t bail on anything important for this,” she said softly.</p><p>            “Oh, no, don’t worry about that. Today was my day off, so my only plans were to go to grocery shopping later.”</p><p>             “Cool. So you weren’t busy, my dad doesn’t have to get mad about getting called out of work to come here… win all around.”</p><p>            Rey cocked her head at BeeBee. “What’s the win for me, exactly?”</p><p>            “A very appreciative 17-year-old girl now owes you a favor. An even <em>bigger</em> favor, I guess, after the other night.”</p><p>            “I’d prefer cash,” Rey told her, and BeeBee swatted at her arm but they smiled at each other.</p><p>            The door to the principal’s office opened, and some other student and parent duo emerged, the student looking thoroughly chewed out. The principal was a stern older woman named Ms. Swanson, whose frown lines made it look as though she hadn’t laughed or smiled in at least a decade.</p><p>            “Alright, Beatrice, your turn,” she announced, glancing over a referral slip. “And I assume this is your mother?”</p><p>            “That’s me,” Rey said, rising to her feet and giving Ms. Swanson a smile—until she realized that a parent probably wouldn’t smile so large if she’d been called into school for a disciplinary meeting with her daughter’s principal, and then she had to quickly readjust her expression.</p><p>            “Right. Well, welcome, Mrs. Dameron. Shall we?”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            The moment Rey walked in the door, Ben had the grocery bags out of her arms and on the counter. “I have a surprise for you, babe.”</p><p>            “What, it can’t wait until I put the food away?” Rey asked, laughing as he pulled her into the living room.</p><p>            “Nope, I don’t want to wait a second. Just go ahead and wait right here.” He lowered her onto the couch and smiled. “Promise you’ll sit?”</p><p>            Rey couldn’t help laughing more over his eagerness, so she just shrugged and said, “Sure, okay, I’m waiting.” As he left to run to his office, she shouted, “Don’t make me wait too long, we have meat and frozens getting warm!”</p><p>            Ben jogged back in only 30 seconds later, an envelope in his hand. “So I know you don’t like doing anything too big for your birthday, but I had an idea.”</p><p>            “Oh?”</p><p>            “Well, I’ve always had a hard time imagining you planning some fancy wedding like Mashra’s, and what with how worried you’ve been that I was just going through the motions with you…” He fiddled with the envelope for a moment before thrusting it out toward Rey. “I had an idea.”</p><p>            Rey genuinely had no idea what to expect as she carefully opened the envelope, but the moment she did, she felt as though she should have known. “Oh, Ben… Vegas.”</p><p>            “I got the tickets for your birthday,” he pointed out needlessly. “I just figured… I’m ready to get married, Rey. We’re in this, so let’s just do it, right? And who knows, a week and a half from now, we could be standing in front of some priest dressed up as Elvis.”</p><p>            She felt a strange buzzing coursing through her, and her mouth had gone completely dry.</p><p>            “That’s wonderful, Ben. This is amazing. It’s the perfect birthday trip.”</p><p>            “Yeah?” He looked so deeply relieved, which somehow made Rey feel worse.</p><p>            “It is, yeah. And you know,” Rey said—words coming out of her mouth before she knew what she was saying, “It’s great that you bought the tickets for my birthday, because I came home with a surprise for you, too.”</p><p>            “Did you?”</p><p>            Rey nodded. “I was thinking about what you said at your parents’ the other night, and I actually found this seminar. A job counseling seminar for millennials struggling to find direction in life.”</p><p>            Ben’s jaw dropped, and he knelt down in front of Rey, settling his hands on her knees. “Really? That’s amazing, babe, I’m so excited for you.”</p><p>            Where the hell was she getting this from? Why the hell was she lying to him?</p><p>            She nodded again. “Yeah, it’s… it’s a week-long retreat at some lake a few hours away. I’m actually leaving tomorrow.”</p><p>            After dinner, Rey found herself packing for a retreat that did not exist, with no clue where she would go the next day. All she knew was that Ben had offered her something that she had believed in for so long, and in that moment, she couldn’t have said whether she wanted it.</p><p>            So she would leave. She would hide and breathe. And she would come back, go to Vegas, and marry him.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            It wasn’t that Rey had no one to run to.</p><p>            But she certainly knew that no one in town would understand. Most of her friends would see this brief vacation as the newest in a long line of cries for help and would feel obligated to <em>tell Ben</em>, as if Rey was a child who needed to be tattled on. She couldn’t intrude on her dad, not for that long. And not for something like this.</p><p>            She was on the brink of just driving an hour, finding a hotel off the expressway, and hiding away for a week, when another idea occurred.</p><p>            “Hey, BeeBee, I think I need to call in that favor.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            “And you’re really sure your dad won’t notice.”</p><p>            “Oh yeah, don’t worry about him.” BeeBee let them into her house as she rolled her eyes at Rey. “Ever since my mom left, he’s leaned <em>hard</em> into work. And even when he’s around, he’s usually in his office in the basement, so I sneak friends over for sleepovers all the time no problem.”</p><p>            Rey hummed to herself, abruptly remembering all of the secret sleepovers she’d had in the Kenobi household. Her foster father told her years later that he’d always known when she had people there, but he’d trusted her and her friends, so he’d let it happen.</p><p>            Now she could only hope that BeeBee’s father was more legitimately oblivious.</p><p>            “Tonight he’s going to some divorcee mixer, so we should be fine to hang out here for a while, and then this guy I know is throwing a party, so I thought maybe we could go to that?”</p><p>            “Sure, sounds cool.”</p><p>            BeeBee led Rey around the house, showing her the living room, the layout of the kitchen, the guest room. She couldn’t help but be fascinated by the family photos that adorned the walls. BeeBee had mentioned that her mom had only left about two years ago, but BeeBee and her father had purged any trace of the woman—the photos chronicled BeeBee’s whole childhood, but it was as though her mother had never been there at all. It was all BeeBee by herself, or posing with her dad.</p><p>            They were walking down the hall between the guest room and BeeBee’s room when Rey stopped at one picture in particular. “I like this one,” she said, pointing.</p><p>            The frame held two photos, and in the first, BeeBee must have been barely older than a toddler. She was perched on her dad’s shoulders, holding her arms aloft, and both of them were mid-laugh when the photo was taken. The second was far more recent, BeeBee tucked under her dad’s arm and rolling her eyes, but her smile was sincere.</p><p>            “Oh yeah, those are from our trips to New York City. It was my first plane trip as a kid, and after my mom left, I think my dad was trying to find ways to make sure that I knew he still loved me or whatever, so he took me again. That was taken right before we saw <em>Much Ado About Nothing</em>. He was <em>so</em> excited for me to see my namesake, you wouldn’t believe.” And it was as though Rey was looking at the photo again—BeeBee rolled her eyes, but there was so much love for her father shining through.</p><p>            “That sounds really nice,” Rey told her gently.</p><p>            BeeBee shrugged, visibly embarrassed, so Rey allowed the moment to pass, turning away from the photos and asking, “Where should I stash my stuff?”</p><p>            Together, they snacked and passed away a few hours in BeeBee’s room, Rey painting their nails as BeeBee introduced her to some of her favorite YouTubers.</p><p>            “I’m so impressed by how neat you are with this,” BeeBee marveled eventually. It was true; Rey used the brush slowly, with great intention, and the result was a tidy manicure and pedicure that rivaled what one might get from a professional. “My friends and I try to do this and we always end up with super uneven layers and the polish gets everywhere. My nails look great now, though.”</p><p>            “Thanks, BeeBee.” Rey grinned at her. “I’ve always had a knack for this, I don’t know. My foster dad used to love telling me that I had a great attention to detail.”</p><p>            “You were a foster kid? How the heck did that not come up in our little heart-to-heart the other night?”</p><p>            Rey could feel herself turning slightly red, and she focused more intently on BeeBee’s nails. So perhaps she had avoided the topic; it was just that most people – even people who’d grown up in so-called “broken” homes or in families that were in some other way messed up – just tended to get so <em>weird</em> when they found out she was a foster kid. It was undeniably one of the reasons that she’d made so few lasting friends after high school—regardless of her other problems with them, at least her high school friends <em>got</em> it.</p><p>            “I guess it just didn’t come to mind.”</p><p>            “As we were talking about how messed up everyone’s family situations are?” Rey looked up at her apologetically, and BeeBee raised her eyebrows, but instead of guilting her further, she murmured, “Could you tell me a bit about him? Your foster dad, I mean.”</p><p>            “Yeah, of course I can.” Rey swallowed and considered BeeBee’s question for a few moments. “He took me in when I was 10. His… his wife and daughter died when he was only 30 or so, and he was never really happy after that, but he started fostering about 15 years later because he was lonely. Initially he only really planned to be a short-term stop for kids, but I got there and we just sort of… fell for each other, I guess. He never adopted me, but that was all my fault, not his. He was all-in, even though I didn’t get it at the time. We’re still really close, though.”</p><p>            She could see the question bouncing around in BeeBee’s head—if Rey was going to stay, why not make it official? But Rey didn’t answer, partially because she suspected that BeeBee knew and understood.</p><p>            All it took was one parent leaving to question the integrity of any other. Rey did not need to recount the nature of any of her other foster situations for BeeBee to get the gist.</p><p>            “Did you ever do <em>his</em> nails?” BeeBee asked, immediately eliminating any tension hanging over the moment.</p><p>            Rey let out a full belly laugh, and BeeBee joined in.</p><p>            Seconds later, they both jolted in surprise as BeeBee’s door opened to reveal her father standing in the hallway.</p><p>            “Alright, that’s it, there is clearly too much fun happening in here,” he announced, peering between them before settling his eyes on Rey. “I don’t know you.”</p><p>            BeeBee rushed to explain before Rey could even process. “This is Rey, she’s just a new friend. No big deal, Dad.”</p><p>            Her reassurances were not stifling her father’s appraising gaze, though; as he furrowed his brow at Rey, she felt deeply uncomfortable, for drastically different reasons than she had only moments before. “Is it just me, or are high schoolers looking rougher and rougher these days?”</p><p>            “Just graduated,” Rey retorted, trying to keep her tone neutral and her expression irritated—after all, if she <em>were</em> anywhere near BeeBee’s age, the comment would probably feel deeply insulting. As it was, she wished she could have laughed.</p><p>            “I thought you were going to that mixer,” BeeBee said—another valiant effort to divert attention from Rey.</p><p>            “Came home to change first.” He was still scrutinizing Rey. She had to hand it to him, he sure was admirably protective of his daughter. “What are you and your friend doing this evening? Bar hopping, perhaps?”</p><p>            BeeBee scoffed. “Jeez, Dad, we’re just going to see a movie.”</p><p>            “Mmm.” At last, he looked to his daughter again. “Make sure you’re home by 11.”</p><p>            “Okay,” BeeBee said to his retreating back.</p><p>            Rey glanced hesitantly at BeeBee, but her friend waved it off and shook her head. “Don’t worry about him. He’s more oblivious than he thinks he is.”</p><p>            Perhaps someday Rey would tell her how untrue that clearly was, even based on the brief interaction they’d just had.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            The party that night was essentially a larger version of the evening Rey had spent with BeeBee’s friends in the park. Those kids, as well as the other teenagers Rey met, were eager to chat with Rey—about Rey and BeeBee’s successful beer run, about Rey’s job, about the ancient teachers at their school who’d been around in Rey’s time. She pierced some kid’s ear because he wanted to rebel against his parents, and as she was cleaning his earlobe beforehand, she found herself thinking absently that Ben would not like this person.</p><p>            She wasn’t sure she minded.</p><p>            At one point, late in the evening, Rey caught sight of BeeBee staring across the room at Artie and CeCe, playing foosball together against two other kids. They were all laughing uproariously.</p><p>            “You alright, Beebs?”</p><p>            BeeBee jolted, and when she looked over at Rey, she looked guilty. “Hmm?”</p><p>            “Just picking up some… vibes,” Rey said carefully. “That you’re casting in the general direction of that foosball game over there.”</p><p>            “Is there any point in trying to deny it?”</p><p>            “Absolutely none.”</p><p>            “Yeah, I thought maybe not.” BeeBee frowned down at her lap and lowered her voice. “It’s CeCe.”</p><p>            Rey smirked.</p><p>            “What, what is it?”</p><p>            “BeeBee and CeCe?”</p><p>            “Stop it,” BeeBee said, swatting at Rey’s arm and rolling her eyes. “That’s all you have to say?”</p><p>            “No, of course not. I’m a little surprised; I didn’t get the sense that they were dating when we hung out the other night.”</p><p>            As she spoke, Artie and CeCe clearly scored a crucial point on the other team, because they cheered loudly and high fived.</p><p>            “They’re not, but I think they might be interested. Or maybe not, I don’t know. I’m not great at picking up on that sort of stuff when I’m at all implicated.”</p><p>            “What kind of kid talks about relationships as things they’re <em>implicated</em> in?” Rey scoffed.</p><p>            “My dad’s kid.”</p><p>            Sure, at this point, that tracked.</p><p>            “I’m assuming this means you haven’t actually told them you’re interested or tried to find out if they like you, then.”</p><p>            When BeeBee shrugged uncomfortably, Rey’s heart went out to her. She could remember that uncomfortable time when she hadn’t yet felt like she could read Ben well enough to determine whether he liked her. She was sure she wasn’t projecting when she assumed that part of it was that neither of them had been able to talk about it with a mother. This was not to say that their fathers were not wonderful – because the more she learned about BeeBee’s situation, the more she believed that the girl’s father was wonderful – but it was also clear that neither father was the type to provide much relationship guidance.</p><p>            “Look,” Rey said carefully. “If you want to date, you’re sure as hell going to have to be vulnerable in a way that might blow up in your face. Maybe that’s by asking someone out, maybe it’s by saying, ‘I love you,’ first, who knows. But CeCe’s one of your best friends, aren’t they? Don’t you think maybe you can trust them with something like that?”</p><p>            BeeBee didn’t smile, not exactly, but Rey caught her lips quirk up.</p><p>            “I’ll keep that in mind,” BeeBee murmured.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            They got back just two minutes before BeeBee’s curfew, and while BeeBee distracted her father with an elaborate recounting of the movie she and Rey had supposedly seen, Rey crept into her room and settled in on the floor beside BeeBee’s bed.</p><p>            Finally, BeeBee eased the door open just enough that she could enter.</p><p>            “Hey, everything good?” Rey whispered.</p><p>            “Yeah, he just tried to trip me up by telling the plot back to me with some details wrong. The usual. No way he saw or heard you, though.”</p><p>            Less than a second after BeeBee finished her sentence, her door swung open as her father shouted, “Aha!”</p><p>            “Jesus Christ, Dad,” BeeBee exclaimed.</p><p>            “Yeah, I didn’t think my kid had picked up ventriloquism since I last checked.” Pointing to Rey, he said, “‘Just graduated,’ let’s talk, c’mon.”</p><p>            He turned his back on them and left, before Rey could even rise to her feet.</p><p>            “Sorry,” BeeBee whispered.</p><p>            “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”</p><p>            Although she had to admit to herself, as she followed Mr. Dameron down to his office in the basement, she had no idea what the hell she could possibly say to him.</p><p>            He held the door open for her and said, “Go ahead and sit on the sofa. You can move whatever you need to.”</p><p>            Rey didn’t know what he was talking about until she caught a glimpse of it—books and papers were spread out on every surface except the lone office chair. As she reached the sofa, she picked up an armful of papers and a few books. At the top of the stack, <em>Crime and Punishment</em>.</p><p>            “A little on the nose for a lawyer, don’t you think?” she asked, showing him the cover.</p><p>            “I need some light reading for the courtroom,” he said in a monotone.</p><p>            Again, Rey wanted to laugh over the tone he was taking with her; she suspected that, had they met in any other context, they would have been fast friends.</p><p>            She sat, and so did he. She found herself fiddling with her hands, her discomfort evident as she sat across from this father who leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and frowned at her. Her discomfort only grew as he allowed the silence to hang between them.</p><p>            “Who are you?” he said at last.</p><p>            “Rey.” She swallowed. “Rey Kenobi.”</p><p>            “Mhm. And I get that this can sometimes be sensitive information for a woman, but how old are you, Rey Kenobi?”</p><p>            “29.”</p><p>            “Right, I see.” He raised his eyebrows. “I imagine it doesn’t surprise you to hear that I don’t love the idea of a 29-year-old woman hanging out with my kid, let alone trying to sleep on her floor without me knowing. That <em>is</em> weird, you know that, yeah?”</p><p>            “Yeah, I do know that.”</p><p>            “Glad to hear it.” He reached over to his desk and grabbed a pen, which he promptly began to fidget with, clicking it and turning it over in his hand. “Care to tell me why you decided to do it anyway?”</p><p>            Rey hesitated, opening her mouth and practically speaking approximately five times before finally, “I’m not… I’m not sure that I can.”</p><p>            “What, are you on some secret mission for the CIA?”</p><p>            “No, I mean I’m not sure that I can explain it to myself. I haven’t really tried.”</p><p>            “I like hearing things better when they’re not rehearsed.”</p><p>            Rey nodded and glanced around the room, trying to find anything to look at that wasn’t this very stern father.</p><p>            Her eyes fell on a picture hanging above the desk of him and BeeBee; again, BeeBee was quite young, but her mother was conspicuously absent.</p><p>            Beside the photo was his diploma, which she squinted at immediately. Almost everything on it was written in Latin, which she knew was standard for J.D.s, so that the only things she could read were his name – Poe Dameron – and—</p><p>            “You went to Harvard Law?” she blurted, before she could think better of it.</p><p>            For the first time, she noticed that Poe nearly laughed, but he evidently had more self-control than she did. “Not what we’re talking about right now.”</p><p>            Rey nodded and smiled apologetically. “Yes, I’m sorry. I… I grew up around here, bopping around the suburbs until my foster dad took me in when I was 10. He lives kind of close, over by the forest preserve?” Rey pointed in the vague direction of the preserve before realizing that Poe did not need to be told the layout of his own neighborhood. “I was one of those ‘gifted and talented’ millennials who was great at school because I was told that I was great at it, until I got halfway through a Master’s and realized I didn’t want it and had never spent any of my education figuring out what I liked and <em>wanted</em> to do.</p><p>            “So I kind of found myself in this weird, in-between sort of place, bounding around odd jobs while everyone in my life kept trying to tell me what <em>they</em> thought I should do… No one wanted to give me time to actually <em>find</em> a path, they just wanted me to suddenly be on one, y’know? It was exhausting. And then I met BeeBee at Target and we chatted for a little bit and she didn’t have anything to say about what I’m doing wrong or how I should fix it and it was just… it was kinda nice to hang out with somebody who cut me some slack for a change.”</p><p>            Poe said nothing for so long that Rey finally added, “I’m sorry, you probably don’t believe me.”</p><p>            “Oh, no, I… I believe you. I gotta think that if you were lying, you’d make up an excuse that’s less fucking weird. You do realize that reverting to a teenage life and sneaking into my house is weird, correct?”</p><p>            “I do, yes.”</p><p>            He sighed and shook his head. “Disregarding the poor life choice on my daughter’s part, I’m a bit impressed that she managed to make this night weirder than it already was.”</p><p>            “Are you talking about that mixer?”</p><p>            “Mm.” Poe grimaced. “One of BeeBee’s friends, Artie, his parents are getting divorced—”</p><p>            “Yeah, sure, I know Artie.”</p><p>            For the first time since they’d met, Poe did laugh, albeit accompanied by an eyeroll. “Right, figures. Those two have been joined at the hip since pre-school. So I’m his dad’s lawyer. His mom was at the mixer.”</p><p>            “Oh. Oh no.”</p><p>            “Oh yes. She spent the whole night trying to flirt with me, it was a nightmare.”</p><p>            “Probably ruined your chances with everyone else, too.”</p><p>            Poe shrugged. “That, I don’t care about as much. All of my divorced friends say that I should try to find someone else who’s been through the process so that we ‘understand each other,’ or something, but I feel like every divorced woman I meet just wants to rehash all of the mistakes that her ex-husband made, and I just refuse to be a part of that.”</p><p>            “Sounds very mature of you.”</p><p>            “I’m very mature.” Poe smirked at her. “I could make a joke right now, you know that.”</p><p>            Rey fell back against the sofa and waved off his comment. “Don’t worry, call me immature if you like, my f-- friends say much worse.” She’d been on the verge of saying, ‘fiancé,’ and she couldn’t have said for sure why she stopped herself.</p><p>            But hell, ‘friends’ was true, too.</p><p>            “They really have that little patience for you struggling to find a direction for your life?”</p><p>            “Yep.” Rey popped the ‘p,’ trying desperately to make herself sound more indifferent to this revelation than she was. She suspected, though, that – in the same way that he clearly saw through his daughter – he looked past her tone and knew the truth.</p><p>            “I actually didn’t start law school until I was your age.”</p><p>            “Yeah?” Rey leaned forward in her seat again, resting her chin in her hand.</p><p>            “Mhm. I got some pretty good money from U of I, and I was supposed to go, but then BeeBee’s mom got pregnant a month before we graduated from high school, so that sort of fucked everything up. I worked off and on for my associate’s while raising that little squirt, then when she was old enough, I was finally able to get my bachelor’s. I bluffed my way through an English degree but one of my professors thought I should apply to law school and eventually I listened to him. Took me a while, though.”</p><p>            She found herself immediately doing the mental math—he’d started law school when BeeBee was 10 or 11. He’d probably been practicing for 4 years, max.</p><p>            “What’d you do in the meantime?”</p><p>            Poe’s brow furrowed, as though he was desperately straining to remember. “Gas station attendant. Macy’s shoe salesman. Librarian for some elementary school that had some budget cuts and couldn’t hire someone with an actual library science degree for a semester. You?”</p><p>            “I work at this second-hand store called The Niima Outpost, downtown.”</p><p>            “Oh, yeah, sure! BeeBee and her mom used to go in there all the time and come home with overpriced things we didn’t need.”</p><p>            “Sounds like the place.” Rey smiled softly. “It’s not a bad time. I like helping people see how they can repurpose someone else’s junk into something good again. Unfortunately my boss is horrible.”</p><p>            “Whose boss isn’t?”</p><p>            She giggled. “That’s what I’ve been saying!”</p><p>            A knock on the door made Rey jump.</p><p>            “What’s up, BeeBee?” Poe asked.</p><p>            His daughter eased the door open and peeked in at her father. “Hi, Dad, just… wondering whether you’re going to let her go soon. It’s not like she’s a kid, you can’t just lecture her as long as you want.”</p><p>            “Really? I feel like maybe that’s not something you have much say in, Beebs. You bring the stranger without clearing it with me or even actually introducing her to me, I interrogate the stranger until 2AM. Seems fair.”</p><p>            BeeBee threw her head back in frustration. “I can’t believe you’re being like this. Well I’m going to go to bed. Please don’t kill my friend while I sleep.”</p><p>            “Jury’s still out there,” he said to BeeBee’s retreating back.</p><p>            “Now’s the moment when you tell me you were also a hitman in your 20s.”</p><p>            Poe raised his eyebrows. “If I were, do you think that’s the kind of thing I would be able to tell you?”</p><p>            “Maybe if you were about to kill me,” Rey offered.</p><p>            He smirked, and for a brief moment, they just smiled at each other, until Poe looked over toward his desk. “You never said, why were you trying to sleep on my daughter’s floor?”</p><p>            “Oh, I…” <em>am running away from my fiancé who I might not love anymore, if I ever did</em>. “My rent ran out and I can’t get into my new place for a week. I didn’t really want to impose on any of my friends, they’ve got their own lives and then there’s the…”</p><p>            “Directionless stuff,” he said. Maybe it should have bothered her—not that he meant for it to, but pretty much everyone else she knew probably would have said that it should have bothered her, that so much of the tension between her and her friends could be described as ‘the directionless stuff.’</p><p>            There was no judgment in his voice, though, and she found that she wasn’t bothered.</p><p>            “Yeah,” she said instead.</p><p>            He sighed heavily and clicked his tongue. “Alright, well, I’m not going to kick you out. It’s late, you need somewhere to sleep, and we have the space. But you’re sleeping in the guest room, I’m not going to make a grown woman sleep on my kid’s floor like it’s some elementary school sleepover.”</p><p>            “Wow, o-- okay. Thanks, Poe.”</p><p>            Something crossed his features that she couldn’t quite describe, but it was gone as soon as it had come. “No problem, Rey.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            BeeBee awoke the next morning to discover Rey and Poe eating breakfast over coffee, and she didn’t bother to conceal her astonishment.</p><p>            “Oh my God, he let you stay?”</p><p>            “Yeah, I’m in the guest room.”</p><p>            “Incredible. And you try to sell yourself as such a hard-ass, Dad.”</p><p>            Poe chuckled. “Oh, not so fast, sweetheart. This seems like the appropriate time to tell you that I’m doubling your chores regimen for a month.”</p><p>            “Hang on, no, she shouldn’t… it’s not her fault,” Rey said.</p><p>            “Nope, she made the decision, them’s the rules.”</p><p>            Shortly after BeeBee emerged for breakfast, she received a text from Artie, announcing that he and CeCe had arrived to drive her to school.</p><p>            “God, I’m running so late,” she said, rushing to finish off her cereal. “What time will you be home today, Dad?”</p><p>            “I’m thinking I’m gonna work from home today, because I really have no good reason to trust this one,” he said, pointing toward Rey. With an apologetic glance, he added, “No offense.”</p><p>            “None taken.”</p><p>            BeeBee squinted at her father. “You’re not going to keep bothering her, though, right?”</p><p>            “Hey, hey, I don’t like you acting like I’m the one at fault here,” Poe said, putting up both hands in exasperation. “Rey is an officially cleared house guest, no more interrogation required. Now go to school before I change my mind.”</p><p>            The moment the front door closed behind BeeBee, Rey asked, “What would you have done if she hadn’t left?”</p><p>            Poe shrugged and took a drink of coffee. “Sent you to pack and just assume you would know you didn’t actually have to leave?”</p><p>            “Got it.” Rey bit her lip to refrain from smirking. He wasn’t wrong—she would have understood at once.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            After eating breakfast, Poe brought some stuff up from his office to work in the living room for the day, and Rey planned to occupy herself with reading and drawing, neither of which Ben was comfortable with her doing when he was at home. He didn’t like seeing her reading frivolous things that weren’t in active pursuit of her career (whatever that was supposed to be), so for the past year or so, she’d had to limit herself to self-help books.</p><p>            Which she didn’t really like, so she’d stopped reading much of anything.</p><p>            Her first day in the Dameron household, though, she pulled out a book and she wandered outside, settling into the glider in the backyard. It seemed both well-made and well-worn from much use, and Rey felt a peculiar sort of joy from sitting in it; as a kid, she’d longed to have a backyard with a face-to-face glider, which she’d seen repeatedly in <em>The Parent Trap</em> and internalized as the epitome of luxury.</p><p>            She must have sat there for hours, poring over some novel that Han had recommended to her at least a year before.</p><p>            Rey became so absorbed that she didn’t notice that Poe had come outside until he sat down opposite her, a glass of lemonade in one hand and a plate with a sandwich in the other.</p><p>            “Oh my God,” she blurted when she finally realized—and Poe smiled, courteous enough not to laugh at her.</p><p>            “No lemon, peanut, or gluten sensitivities?” he asked tentatively.</p><p>            Rey smiled and set her book down. “Nope, I’m all good.”</p><p>            “Good.” He handed off her lunch. “I was expecting to hear you come inside once you got hungry, but then I realized it was almost 1:30 and you were still out here, so I thought you might be a little preoccupied.”</p><p>            “1:30 already?” Rey exclaimed, rushing to look at her phone.</p><p>            Damn. She’d meant to get away for fifteen minutes to call Ben during his lunch break so that he could hear about how great her retreat was going.</p><p>            “Mhm. Must be some book, to keep you so preoccupied.”</p><p>            “It’s not bad.” Rey fidgeted with the cover between her fingers while she took a drink of lemonade. “A friend recommended it, and he and I sometimes have overlapping taste in books, but…”</p><p>            “Not this one.”</p><p>            She grimaced and shook her head. “Not so much. I think I’m partially getting through it so fast because I’m just trying to figure out what’s bugging me about it, if that makes sense.”</p><p>            “It does, yeah.” Poe grinned. “Any success so far?”</p><p>            “Absolutely none. I can only hope that your morning was more fruitful.”</p><p>            Poe smiled and leaned back in his seat. “It was, I think. After I got through my monthly argument with BeeBee’s mom about child support.”</p><p>            Rey felt her jaw drop, and she rushed to conceal her surprise by saying, “Oh? She told me that you haven’t heard from her mom in at least a year.”</p><p>            For a long moment, Poe hesitated, and Rey worried that they had strayed too far into a subject that he didn’t want to discuss with her. After all, they were near-strangers, and she was there because she’d befriended his kid, not him.</p><p>            “You’re not a parent, Rey, so maybe this won’t quite make sense to you, but… sometimes when a teenage girl’s mom decides she wants nothing to do with her kid, that girl’s dad maybe fudges the truth a bit.”</p><p>            Rey had just taken a bite of her sandwich, and even though she swallowed it just fine, she could feel a stop in her throat as she thought of her own mother—the detail she’d neglected to share with BeeBee the day before when discussing her foster situation.</p><p>            “My dad did the same for me,” she murmured. Even as the words came out of her mouth, she couldn’t quite believe she was telling him this. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d told anyone.</p><p>            The only explanation that she could come up with was that perhaps it was easier, sharing the details of her troubled childhood with a kind stranger she’d never have to see again.</p><p>            “Your foster father?” Poe offered.</p><p>            Rey nodded. The clouds shifted above them and the sun was suddenly glaring in her eyes, so that she had to squint at him as she said, “Lots of people don’t realize that plenty of foster kids still see their parents. And I did get visits with my mom, for most of elementary school. Not long after I moved in with Ben – that’s my dad – something happened. He still hasn’t really told me the details, and I haven’t asked, but for whatever reason, she decided that she couldn’t stand to see me anymore. At the time, Ben told me she had to move away to take care of my sick grandma. I didn’t even realize for a few years that he’d lied.”</p><p>            “Good dad,” Poe said softly.</p><p>            And she echoed the sentiment, gesturing toward Poe. “Good dad.”</p><p>            “More like ‘dad trying his best,’” he chuckled.</p><p>            “Exactly. Good dad.” Rey found herself thinking back to the day before, her conversation with BeeBee about their trip to New York. “BeeBee knows it too, even without knowing some of the things that you’re protecting her from. Just so you know. She does appreciate it.”</p><p>            “When she’s not sneaking grown women into my house, you mean.”</p><p>            Rey smirked. “Except for then.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            Poe had only intended to take a short break from his work, but they chatted so long that next thing they knew, they were discussing their favorite childhood television shows when BeeBee interrupted them to ask, “Hey, what are you guys doing out here?”</p><p>            “Beebs?” Poe twisted to look toward the house, watching his daughter draw closer. “What are you doing home?”</p><p>            “Well y’know, it tends to be my first stop once I get out of school.”</p><p>            “You’re out of school,” he repeated, his eyes widening slightly. As BeeBee reached them, he fumbled at his pockets for a moment before shaking his head and laughing. “Well shit, I was supposed to hear from a client about an hour ago, but I must have left my phone inside and lost track of time. I should probably go and see whether I can still reach him.”</p><p>            BeeBee took his vacated seat and she and Rey both turned to watch him when he spun around and walked backward toward the house so he could say to them, “Pizza sound alright for dinner?”</p><p>            “Sounds just fine,” BeeBee laughed. Looking to Rey, she furrowed her brow and said, “Well that was weird. I hope he wasn’t bothering you.”</p><p>            “No, not at all, we were having a nice talk. About how awesome you are, obviously.”</p><p>            In fact, they’d barely discussed BeeBee at all, but that felt weird to acknowledge to herself, let alone to BeeBee.</p><p>            “What do you think of staying in tonight? I don’t want you to feel like you’ve been pent up all day, but I’m kind of in the mood to just stay up too late watching cheesy romcoms on Netflix.”</p><p>            “That sounds perfect,” Rey agreed with a smile.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            After a very apologetic phone call with his client, Poe ordered pizza, and an hour later, they were sat at the dining room table. BeeBee described the day’s classes, Poe zeroing in on her English class’s current work on <em>Slaughterhouse-Five</em>, and Rey spoke a little, but she mostly just listened. It had been years since she’d had a family dinner with anyone but Ben and his parents, and as much as she loved Han and Leia, there was something so comforting about this easy, sincere conversation.</p><p>            It was such a stark contrast to all the topics Ben avoided with his parents.</p><p>            One of BeeBee’s chores was dish washing, so when they were finished eating, she sent Rey to the living room, instructing her to, “Go ahead and figure out what you want to watch while I do the dishes.”</p><p>            By the time BeeBee was finished, Rey had settled on <em>Clueless</em>.</p><p>            “Yes, <em>perfect</em>,” she exclaimed at the sight of Alicia Silverstone. “I haven’t watched this in ages. So I figured that since we just ate, we can get started and then go make some popcorn once we’re a little peckish, yeah?”</p><p>            They found themselves ‘a little peckish’ about halfway through the movie, paused and went into the kitchen to find Poe standing at the fridge.</p><p>            “If I were doing that, he’d scold me for running up the electricity bill,” BeeBee told Rey conspiratorially.</p><p>            “Luckily I’m the one that <em>pays</em> the electricity bill, so it’s all on me.” He reached out a hand for BeeBee and she allowed him to pull her close and press a kiss to the crown of her head. “I was trying to decide between a beer or some wine. Which is probably a decision I should have made before opening the fridge.”</p><p>            “Probably, yes.”</p><p>            He scoffed and shooed BeeBee away before pulling out a bottle of wine, leaving BeeBee to toss the popcorn in the microwave. As he reached into the cabinet, he asked, “Rey, would you like a glass?”</p><p>            Rey was caught off-guard, so much so that she just blinked at Poe for a few moments before finally saying, “Oh, um… Sure. I’ve honestly never tried pairing wine with popcorn.”</p><p>            “Oh, it is a time-honored tradition in this house.”</p><p>            “By which he means he does it and takes great delight in not allowing me to join him.”</p><p>            “Sweetie, you are allowed to drink under my roof when you turn 18, and not a day sooner.” Leaning back against the counter, he considered his daughter. “So what are we watching this evening?”</p><p>            “<em>We</em> are watching<em> Clueless</em>,” BeeBee said, gesturing between her and Rey. “I’ve got no idea what you’re doing.”</p><p>            Poe made a show of pouting. “What, are you too good to watch a movie with your old man while your cool, older friend is over?”</p><p>            Rey hesitated, trying to gauge whether BeeBee’s irritation with Poe was just playfully performative. <em>Yes</em>, she determined, before carefully saying, “I mean, he can join us, if he wants.”</p><p>            They both twisted to look at her in surprise. “You sure?” BeeBee asked, visibly skeptical.</p><p>            “I don’t mind if you don’t.”</p><p>            BeeBee looked her father over for a long moment. “In that case, we’re going to need another bag of popcorn. He can finish one off single-handedly.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            “Another?” Poe proposed when the credits began to roll.</p><p>            BeeBee cocked her head at him. “I do recall you lamenting recently that I hadn’t seen <em>Sixteen Candles</em>.”</p><p>            Rey gasped and looked between Poe and BeeBee, appalled. Her reaction was mostly for show, perhaps, but she did feel a hint of genuine outrage. “You’re raising your kid in John Hughes’ backyard and she hasn’t seen <em>Sixteen Candles</em>?”</p><p>            “Hey, no, this is not exclusively my fault,” Poe rushed to explain. “Her mom <em>hates</em> John Hughes.”</p><p>            “Mm, alright.” Rey claimed the bowl of popcorn from BeeBee as she went to figure out where <em>Sixteen Candles</em> was streaming. “Don’t take responsibility for a severe parental failing.”</p><p>            To BeeBee, as though Rey was not in the room, Poe said, “Sweetie, I think your friend needs to leave.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            <em>Sixteen Candles</em> ended, and Rey got up to head to the guest room to get ready for bed – and maybe to text Ben? If she could figure out what to say to him? – but before she had taken more than a step, BeeBee offered, “It’s early enough that we can make it through one more, right?”</p><p>            Poe raised his eyebrows at his daughter. “You <em>consistently</em> fall asleep when we start a movie this late, Beebs.”</p><p>            “Just because that’s happened once or twice…” BeeBee mumbled, curling in closer to her father on the couch.</p><p>            Her eyes were not on Poe, so she didn’t see him shake his head at Rey and mouth, <em>Every time</em>.</p><p>            Rey smirked and said, “I’m going to use the restroom and get some water, then I’m happy to keep going if BeeBee wants to.”</p><p>            By the time she returned, BeeBee had stretched out on the couch even more, her feet now up on the cushion where Rey had previously been sitting.</p><p>            Likely she expected Rey to sit in the chair that was positioned to the side of the couch, facing the television at an angle. But toward the last act of <em>Sixteen Candles</em>, Rey had been getting antsy in her seat anyway, so after briefly considering the chair, she settled down on the floor instead, leaning back against the couch.</p><p>            “You sure you want to sit down there?” Poe asked. “I promise the chair is just as comfortable, or BeeBee can move her feet…”</p><p>            Rey craned her neck to look up at him, and she smiled softly. “That’s alright, I kind of like it down here.”</p><p>            From her vantage point on the floor, Rey watched Poe and BeeBee bicker over the final movie they would watch – they finally settled on <em>Pretty Woman</em> – and she felt an incredible burst of warmth and joy that sent all thoughts of texting Ben from her mind.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            The movie had barely begun when Rey heard the faint sound of snoring behind her. Glancing back, she saw that BeeBee had, indeed, fallen asleep, her head tucked awkwardly onto her father’s shoulder. Poe caught Rey looking and he smiled slightly, whispered, “I told her so.”</p><p>            “You did,” Rey agreed, unable to suppress an amused smirk.</p><p>             “I’m kind of relieved it happened before I had to conspicuously excuse myself during every sex scene.” At the sight of Rey’s puzzled face, he added, “I can stand to sit through most sex scenes with my kid, but something about this movie…”</p><p>            Rey swallowed hard, suddenly feeling nervous. She had a guess at what made it particularly awkward—the sex scenes in <em>Pretty Woman</em> mattered. They were intimate and lingering, and frankly they were the exact reason why she’d never been able to watch the film with Ben, either. They made her feel too vulnerable, a particular kind of vulnerability she’d never really been able to share with Ben.</p><p>            “I get what you mean,” she said softly.</p><p>            Casting her gaze over BeeBee’s features, Rey smiled at how happy her friend looked in her sleep. She hadn’t noticed until she got a glimpse of this alternative, but she suddenly realized that, when awake, BeeBee never smiled, not really.</p><p>            She came the closest with her dad, even they were bickering.</p><p>            “Does she wake up again?” Rey murmured. “After she passes out like this, I mean.”</p><p>            “Not really. I once watched most of the extended version of <em>The Fellowship of the Ring</em> with her sleeping on my shoulder.”</p><p>            Rey giggled. “Should we keep going, then?”</p><p>            He cocked his head at her. “Do you want to?”</p><p>            She shrugged, noncommittal.</p><p>            “Alright, why not. Only, would you mind getting me some water first? I’d do it myself but, y’know.” Poe gestured to BeeBee. “Human pillow.”</p><p>            When Rey returned, she handed over his glass then sat down absent-mindedly, and it wasn’t until they’d gotten back into the movie that she realized how much closer she was to Poe—she found that with each intake of breath, she just barely felt his leg against her shoulder.</p><p>            She didn’t move, and neither did he.</p><p>            He didn’t conspicuously excuse himself during every sex scene, and neither did she.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            BeeBee was up bright and early the next morning, and it seemed that she was closely listening to Rey to stir, because not long after Rey woke up, BeeBee eased open the door of the guest room. “Hey, I come bearing coffee.”</p><p>            “Mm, good friend.” Rey perched on her elbows before pulling herself up to a sitting position.</p><p>            After BeeBee handed over the mug, she sat on the end of Rey’s bed, settling in with her legs crossed.</p><p>            “Sorry that I fell asleep last night. I don’t really remember my dad waking me up, but he said you guys finished the movie anyway?”</p><p>            Rey was unsurprised that BeeBee could remember nothing after falling asleep; she had barely budged even when Poe tried to get up after the film, and despite all of his griping about how <em>she’s gotten way too big for this</em>, he’d carried his daughter to her room.</p><p>            Which had made Rey’s heart stutter just slightly, though she was pointedly trying to ignore that.</p><p>            “Yeah, we did. It took us a while to notice you’d really conked out.”</p><p>            BeeBee shrugged. “Whatever, I’ve seen it a hundred times. My dad always gets weird about watching it with me, anyway, I don’t know why he agrees.” She grimaced, and Rey had to work very hard to keep from chuckling. But BeeBee’s expression turned serious, and she lowered her voice. “So I’m heading to school in a few minutes, but I wanted to see if you’d be up for something tomorrow morning?”</p><p>            “Probably, what is it?”</p><p>            “My dad’s birthday is in a few weeks, and back when I was younger, we’d always celebrate by driving up to Wisconsin and going to this total tourist trap of a store… We haven’t been since my mom left, which is fine with me, but he never stops talking about how much he misses stocking up on this really fancy cheese that he loves… I was wondering whether we could go up there and get some so that I can surprise him.”</p><p>            “Oh, BeeBee…” Rey smiled warmly. “That sounds really nice. Of course we can do that.”</p><p>            Her friend grinned eagerly. “You’re really great, Rey.”</p><p>            Shortly after BeeBee left, Rey got up and was surprised to find Poe still sitting at the breakfast table, nursing a mug of coffee. “Oh, hi.” Padding over to join him, she said, “I wasn’t expecting you to be here. Are you working from home again today?”</p><p>            “Nah, nothing like that. I’ve decided that I trust you, and I will be <em>very</em> stern if you make me regret it.”</p><p>            “Justifiably.” She smirked at him. “I promise your trust is not misplaced.”</p><p>            Poe’s expression was soft, his voice low as he said, “I really hope that’s true.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            Not long before lunch, Rey texted Ben. <em>Hey, babe. I have a bit of free time during lunch. FaceTime?</em></p><p>            Ben responded quickly, eagerly. <em>Yes! When?</em></p><p>            She searched the house to find an unobtrusive patch of wall that she could sit in front of, an impressive feat given how thoroughly Poe and BeeBee had decorated. When she was all settled with her laptop on a table in front of her, she looked up and realized that on the wall facing her was a photo of Poe holding BeeBee as a baby.</p><p>            His hair was longer, making his curls more defined; he had the untidy stubble of a new parent who hadn’t been able to shave in quite a few days; and he was peering at the camera over a pair of glasses.</p><p>            Rey felt a flush around her neck and went to find something, anything— the first thing that presented itself was a post-it note, from one of many stacks scattered around BeeBee’s desk.</p><p>            She placed the post-it over the photo, sat down at her computer, and called Ben.</p><p>            “Babe! Hi!”</p><p>            “Hi, Ben,” she said softly.</p><p>            “It’s so nice to see your face,” he told her.</p><p>            “Yeah, yours too.” Rey bit her lip.</p><p>            And the thing was, she wasn’t lying. There was something warm and reassuring about looking at Ben, looking at the joy on his face upon seeing her.</p><p>            He was one of the most familiar, most permanent features of her life, and that meant something.</p><p>            “So is it great? Are you having the best time?”</p><p>            Rey nodded. “Yeah, it’s… it’s pretty wonderful. I think this was exactly what I needed, in order to… y’know, figure everything out.”</p><p>            “That’s really amazing, babe.” Ben smiled widely. “Can you tell me anything about it or is it all top-secret?”</p><p>            “No, nothing like that.” Rey hesitated, glancing down at her lap where she was wringing her hands nervously. “I just… Maybe we can just talk all about it once I get home? I’ve been so immersed in everything here that right now I’d kind of just love to hear about how things are going with you.”</p><p>            So Ben talked, and Rey listened, her eyes shifting from her screen to that damned post-it note more times than she could count.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            That afternoon, she expected BeeBee to arrive home first, but instead, it was Poe, who strode into the dining room to find her drawing.</p><p>            “Afternoon. Steal anything while I was gone?”</p><p>            Rey feigned a moment of thoughtfulness. “Does a frozen meal and can of pop count?”</p><p>            “‘Fraid so, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” He strode over to the refrigerator and retrieved another can, which he cracked open as he walked toward her.</p><p>            She squinted at him. “Are you going to get tired of that particular threat?”</p><p>            “Unlikely. Why, are you tired of it?”</p><p>            “No,” Rey said honestly. She tried not to feel self-conscious as Poe sat down across from her and peered down at her work in progress.</p><p>            “Is that Beebs?”</p><p>            Rey nodded. “Mhm. I’ve just been doing little doodles of her and some of her friends she’s introduced me to, I was thinking I might surprise her with it when I leave.”</p><p>            “Like a thank you.”</p><p>            “Yeah.”</p><p>            Poe leaned his chin in his hand. “And you’re planning this thank you for her and not the owner of this fine domicile because…”</p><p>            “Because I couldn’t remember your face well enough.”</p><p>            This was nonsense, not purely because the house was filled to the brim with possible reference photos. The fact of the matter was that she had considered drawing Poe, but she had been rendered completely useless at the process, nervous about what would happen if she spent too long focusing on the details of his face. Nervous about what she would find in him, about what she would find in herself while looking.</p><p>            He did not call her on the fact that they were surrounded by family photos, but he did grin broadly. “Well, I’m here now.”</p><p>            “Would you like me to draw you, Poe?”</p><p>            “I really would, yeah.”</p><p>            She felt herself smirking, a combination of exasperation and delight, as she flipped to a new page.</p><p>            As she put pencil to paper, she asked, “Did you have a good day at work?”</p><p>            “I did, yeah. And I was able to use my houseguest as an excuse to head home early, so thanks for that.”</p><p>            Rey laughed. “Glad to be of service.”</p><p>            She cast her gaze over his neck and caught sight of a chain that was mostly concealed by his collar; the whole time they’d been talking the day before, she hadn’t noticed it, which made her suspect that he kept it tucked away on purpose.</p><p>            “Can I… ask you about this?” she asked, vaguely gesturing toward his neck.</p><p>            “Oh.” Poe’s eyes widened slightly, and he glanced down before tentatively pulling it out from under his shirt. Attached to the chain was what looked to be a silver wedding band, modest but clearly well-maintained. “It’s, um, my mom’s. She left it to me when she passed away.”</p><p>            Rey felt her throat go dry, struck by the earnestness in his eyes. “Do you always wear it?”</p><p>            “Always.”</p><p>            “That’s really nice,” Rey murmured.</p><p>            For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. It was Poe that spoke first, nodding toward her sketchbook. “Do you want to include it in that?”</p><p>            “Do you want me to?”</p><p>            The corners of his mouth quirked up slightly. “Might be a nice touch, yeah?”</p><p>            “Yeah,” Rey agreed, her voice barely above a whisper.</p><p>            Neither of them were inclined to disrupt the energy of the moment, not at first, and they sat in silence for some time, Rey taking in his eyes, his nose, his jaw and trying to hold them in her memory as she sketched the initial outline of his features.</p><p>            “Would you tell me more about you, Rey Kenobi?”</p><p>            Her eyes were on the page, not on him, and it was toward the sketch of his face that she cocked her head. “What would you like to know?”</p><p>            “Anything you’d like to tell me.”</p><p>            She met his gaze, felt her heart in her throat at the sincerity there, and immediately her mind ran over a million different things she could say.</p><p>            <em>I’ve never trusted anyone as quickly as you. Or as much.</em></p><p>            <em>I don’t know if I can marry Ben in less than a week and I don’t know how much of that is because of you.</em></p><p>            “I’ll tell you about my first kiss if you tell me about yours,” Rey offered instead.</p><p>            Poe laughed, an eager, surprised laugh. “Deal.”</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            Rey and BeeBee were up and out of the house bright and early, before Poe was even out of his room, so that they could get up to the store in good time. BeeBee had her phone set up with the Bluetooth in Rey’s car immediately, and she spent much of the drive eagerly showing Rey her favorite music.</p><p>            “I can’t remember the last time I really spent this much time listening to music…” Rey told BeeBee.</p><p>            “God, really? Doesn’t that kill you?”</p><p>            “A little bit, I guess.”</p><p>            What Rey couldn’t say – and she still couldn’t have said <em>why</em> she couldn’t bring herself to tell BeeBee about Ben – was that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to listen to music. It was just that her music taste differed so drastically from Ben’s that they’d both just… stopped listening to much of anything when they were together.</p><p>            And she was rarely by herself long enough to listen to things alone, until it no longer occurred to her to try.</p><p>            “What do you listen to? When you do listen?”</p><p>            Rey frowned at the road. “Mostly stuff my dad introduced me to. I usually end up listening to music when I need to feel a little safer.” When she’s gotten into an argument with Ben and she needs to just drive for an hour or two to cool off before resolving things. “He likes Stevie Nicks a lot, so her. Some Steely Dan, Simon and Garfunkel…”</p><p>            “Jeez, and I thought my dad listened to old music!”</p><p>            “By which I’m assuming you mean… ‘90s music?” Rey tried to imagine Poe as a teenager, probably feeling proud of his slightly belated discovery of Radiohead, maybe, or Neutral Milk Hotel. Ashamed of the secret liking of Britney Spears that Rey assumed he had.</p><p>            “Maybe,” BeeBee said with a laugh. “I get what you mean, though. The feeling safer thing.”</p><p>            Rey felt herself smiling at the road. “I thought you might.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            BeeBee guided Rey eagerly through the store, finding something on almost every shelf that she needed to point out and tell a story about.</p><p>            “When I was about five, I got <em>so</em> sick once after eating too many of these…” she said, pointing out a rack of Jelly Bellies. “I still can’t bring myself to eat cherry jelly beans because that was all I could taste for hours after I threw up.”</p><p>            “Ugh, BeeBee,” Rey exclaimed, even as she laughed.</p><p>            “Oh, and this was always my mom’s favorite soda.” BeeBee gestured to a brand of root beer that Rey was unfamiliar with. “I remember this one time I’d had a really bad week, so my dad drove me up here without telling my mom, and we stocked up on so much of this for her… She was so unhappy we’d gone without her, until she saw how much root beer in the trunk and then it was all okay.”</p><p>            As she reached the end of this story, her voice faltered just slightly, and her hand dropped from where it had been lingering over one of the bottles—as though she’d been on the brink of buying one for her mom to surprise her.</p><p>            Hesitantly, Rey reached over and linked their arms together, turning them away from the drinks and toward the meaningless tchotchkes along a nearby wall.</p><p>            “That’s really sweet,” she told BeeBee gently.</p><p>            “It was,” BeeBee agreed.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            The store had a restaurant section, and they ate an early lunch before going in search of cheese for Poe. BeeBee filled a basket to the brim with cheeses, meats, and candy, with occasional input from Rey, until they finally made their way to the line.</p><p>            Which was where it happened.</p><p>            “Rey?”</p><p>            She spun around automatically at the sound of her name and felt her stomach drop at the sight of Mashra, a few registers over.</p><p>            For a few long moments – it had to have been at least an eon or two – Rey’s jaw dropped, and she felt herself go speechless. Frankly, one of the reasons she’d been so game for going out with BeeBee was that she’d assumed they were going far enough from home that they were unlikely to encounter anyone who might know she was supposed to be<em> figuring out her life</em>. It had not occurred to her that her friends – who’d opted for a weekend away pre-honeymoon until Mashra could justify taking more time off work after some intense deadlines – would be driving up to their vacation home that morning.</p><p>            Less than ideal. Rey couldn’t shake the feeling that she was about to be caught in her lie.</p><p>            At last, she managed to say, “Oh my God, Mashra, hi.”</p><p>            Glancing at BeeBee nervously, she murmured, “Give me a few?” And BeeBee, ever-wonderful, nodded at once.</p><p>            Rey wove through the other lines to reach Mashra. “How’s married life?” she asked carefully. Praying that Ben had not told people that Rey had left to find herself at some retreat.</p><p>            “Absolute bliss,” Mashra said in a monotone. “That’s not important right now, Rey, I’m just trying to figure out why you’re here. Ben told us all that you were going to some retreat to <em>find yourself</em> and get your life together. And that you probably weren’t checking your messages, so that’s why you weren’t calling me back. But you’re just out shopping and hanging out with some kid I’ve never seen before. You don’t even like kids.”</p><p>            “I like kids,” Rey retorted, feeling a little foolish as she did so. But a little angry, too—it had taken only a few seconds for Rey to feel defensive around this woman who was supposedly one of her closest friends.</p><p>            “Mm.” Mashra kept her eyes on BeeBee for a moment longer before looking back to Rey. “Doesn’t answer my question, though.”</p><p>            Rey rubbed at her forehead, exasperated. “Okay, here… here’s the thing.  No, I’m not at a retreat, exactly, not in some sort of sense with the structure and the group trust exercises and workshops and things. I just… needed a second of personal time. To take a breath and get my shit together. And then I can go home in a couple of days and everything will be back to normal. It’s that sort of retreat.”</p><p>            Mashra frowned at Rey. “Is this about Ben? I knew I shouldn’t have told you he was going to—”</p><p>            “No, no, this isn’t about Ben,” Rey rushed to say. “It’s about me. It’s just about me. Getting my priorities straight.”</p><p>            Softly, Mashra said, “I want to believe that. Which is why I’m not going to tell Ben that I saw you here today. We all really want to see you grow up, Rey. Honestly. And you and Ben… you’re a great bet. So if this is what it’s going to take, I guess I support you.” She cast one last glance toward BeeBee. “Go ahead and get back to babysitting, or whatever it is you’re doing.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            “What was that about?” BeeBee asked once they were sequestered in the car.</p><p>            “Oh, nothing, she was just… passing on a message.”</p><p>            BeeBee hesitated before saying, “You didn’t look very happy about it, whatever it was.”</p><p>            Rey turned over her exchange with Mashra in her mind, feeling the tension, frustration, and guilt that hung over her while speaking to her friend.</p><p>            “I wasn’t very happy,” she said.</p><p>            “Does this help?” BeeBee held out a bag of sour gummies for Rey to retrieve one.</p><p>            And Rey couldn’t have said whether she was talking about the candy or her stay with BeeBee when she said, “Yeah, it does.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            “Hey.” Poe’s voice came from the living room as BeeBee shut the front door behind her. “Where you two been?”</p><p>            “I had to run an errand.”</p><p>            BeeBee and Rey reached the entrance to the living room and peered in to look at him, where he was in the middle of poring over some paperwork. But he gazed over his reading glasses at his daughter as he said, “I wasn’t aware that you had errands.”</p><p>            BeeBee sighed heavily. “Just the one errand, Dad. Top secret, you know how it is.”</p><p>            “Top secret?” he echoed. “As in, ‘I’ll find out in a few weeks when you present it to me for my birthday,’ top secret? Because I’ve recently become an advocate for receiving birthday gifts up to a month early in this house.”</p><p>            Ignoring her father’s comment completely, BeeBee said, “Um, CeCe’s sleeping over tonight, they should be here around dinner time.” As she spoke, she was already retreating toward her room.</p><p>            “Okay, well, keep them away from our valuables,” he called out. When BeeBee turned back around to roll her eyes at him, he amended, “I was joking, Beebs. That was a joke.”</p><p>            “Yeah, I know. Bye, Dad.”</p><p>            Rey made to follow BeeBee, but Poe called out to her conspiratorially. “Rey, hang on.”</p><p>            She leaned on the door frame and thought too hard about what to do with her hands before finally tucking them into her back pants pockets. “Hmm?”</p><p>            “You can tell me what my birthday present is, right?”</p><p>            “Ah.” Rey smiled and mimed zipping her lips. “Afraid ‘top secret’ means top secret. She said she wants to see you surprised.”</p><p>            He waved her away, feigning outrage. “Useless.”</p><p>            Following in BeeBee’s wake, Rey couldn’t help smiling wider—a smile she hid a moment before stepping into her friend’s room.</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            BeeBee and CeCe sat propped against BeeBee’s bed, giggling over their yearbook as Rey painted CeCe’s toenails. This was the first time they’d spent with CeCe together since BeeBee’s revelation of her crush on her friend, and Rey couldn’t help the joy that she felt as she observed how smitten BeeBee was.</p><p>            Feeling just slightly meddlesome, Rey rose to her feet after finishing with the nail polish. “I’m going to get some snacks.”</p><p>            “Alright,” BeeBee said, at the same time CeCe said, “Sounds good.”</p><p>            They were both too deeply absorbed in laughing over the previous year’s senior superlatives to say much of anything else.</p><p>            Rey was on the brink of retreating to the guest room and just reading in there for a half an hour or so, but on an impulse, she went down to Poe’s office instead.</p><p>            “Knock, knock,” she said, lightly tapping on the door jamb with her fingers.</p><p>            “Hey,” Poe said, sitting up a little taller on his couch at the sight of her.</p><p>            She smiled. “Hey. Mind if I come in?”</p><p>            “No, no, not at all. Thanks for knocking.”</p><p>            “Yeah, of course. Wanted to be polite.” Rey sat in the office chair across from Poe, thinking, as she did so, about how he’d questioned her from the exact same chair two nights before. How was it only two nights? As she pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged, she cocked her head at the papers he’d been perusing on the coffee table. “Do you always work on Saturday nights?”</p><p>            “Oh, uh…” He looked down at everything spread out, and he grimaced; had she embarrassed him? “Not… not always, just… y’know, when BeeBee has friends over, and I know she probably wants me to make myself scarce, I might as well clock in a few extra hours so that I can sleep in on Monday.”</p><p>            Rey raised her eyebrows. “You might recall that Netflix exists.”</p><p>            “Net-what now?” But he went about pulling everything together and tucking it away into a folder. As he did, he asked, “What would you be doing on a normal Saturday night, then? Since you have so many opinions about my routine.”</p><p>            Having dinner with Ben and his parents. Which she didn’t want to tell him.</p><p>            “Absolutely nothing,” she said with a small laugh. Which was also at least partially true, when they were not having dinner with Han and Leia. “Netflix, I guess.”</p><p>            “You know, that shocks me. You really struck me as the sort to be out at clubs each weekend, uh… how are the youths describing it these days? ‘Turning up’?”</p><p>            Rey laughed again, harder this time. “Not in a million years. Went once in college and said never again.” She considered him carefully. “You probably missed out on that completely because of BeeBee, didn’t you?”</p><p>            Poe shrugged. “I guess, although I don’t know whether I’d call it ‘missing out.’ Like, given the choice between my kid and partying through my twenties, I’d take Beebs.”</p><p>            “That’s very generous of you.”</p><p>            “It really is,” he agreed with a wide grin.</p><p>            She rolled her eyes and cast her gaze over his desk, catching sight of her drawing of him on top of a pile of some folders and a legal pad. She’d tried not to think of it since BeeBee had gotten home the night before, and looking at it again, she was just struck by how handsome he looked; his slight curls a little messy, freed from whatever product he used after a long day at work; his jawline striking, accented by his five-o’clock shadow; his expression playful, eyes shining as he looked at her.</p><p>            “Thanks again for that,” he said, evidently realizing where she was looking. “I feel so important, now that I’ve posed for some art.”</p><p>            Rey’s lips quirked up, and with her eyes still focused on the drawing, she teasingly asked, “Do you think I captured your essence?”</p><p>            “Do you?”</p><p>            And the question suddenly felt so much less playful as she looked up and met his eye. Swallowing hard, she said, “Yeah, I do.”</p><p>            “Me too,” Poe agreed softly.</p><p>            For a few long moments, his words hung in the air. Rey’s mouth was slightly open, as though she was about to speak, but nothing came to mind. She could barely think, barely breathe, all of a sudden, while he looked at her like he was…</p><p>            “I need a drink,” he announced to her. “Do you want a drink?”</p><p>            “Wha-- now?”</p><p>            “Sure. You’re leaving soon, right?”</p><p>            “Yeah…” Rey said carefully, glancing in the general direction of the stairs. “I’m… I think I’m supposed to be in the middle of a sleepover.”</p><p>            Poe scoffed. “That? Oh, they’re like little animals, they’re like gerbils. They have next to no concept of time. They won’t even notice you’re gone.” He tilted his head and gave her a gentle smile. “You can say no if you want to.”</p><p>            She didn’t want to say no.</p><p>            “Yeah, we can have a drink,” she agreed.</p><p>            Which led to the two of them creeping up the stairs to the kitchen and, after whispered deliberation, grabbing the six-pack from the fridge. As an after-thought, Poe said, “Go on downstairs, I’ll be there in a second.”</p><p>            Rey hesitated when she reached the basement, dithering over where to sit down. By the time Poe returned, she was seated on her knees in front of the coffee table, in the process of popping open one of the beers.</p><p>            “What is it with you and the floor?” Poe asked, even as he sat down and crossed his legs on the floor across from her.</p><p>            “What is it with you and chairs?” she retorted. Catching sight of the bottle in his hand, she sat up higher, craning to read the label. “Is that bourbon?”</p><p>            He smiled eagerly and nodded. “Yep. I keep the good stuff hidden away in my closet, because it’s not that I don’t trust my daughter… But I don’t trust my daughter. You’re welcome to not respond to that in any way that might incriminate her.”</p><p>            “Mhm, sounds like a plan,” Rey agreed, sliding another open beer across the table to him. “So do I get a shot of the good stuff?”</p><p>            “Of course you do.” Poe revealed two shot glasses in his other hand. As he poured, he told her, “No cheers, though, that’s corny.”</p><p>            Rey laughed. “I fully agree.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            “So I wanna talk about CeCe,” Poe told Rey eventually; by this point, they’d each downed two shots and were about finished with their first beers, which they’d been drinking somewhat slowly. Rey couldn’t have even said how much time had passed. “Are they dating? Beebs tells me no and I can’t figure out whether I should believe her.”</p><p>            “You know that I have to say no even if she is lying,” Rey pointed out. “Friend-friend privilege and all.”</p><p>            He hummed, resigned. “Fair point. I guess it’s just…” He let out a heavy sigh and stretched out his arm across the coffee table in exasperation. “Can I complain to you for a sec?”</p><p>            Rey nodded. “Shoot.”</p><p>            “I’m trying to be a good dad in this brave new world of not assuming who our kids are interested in, and just trying to keep an open line of communication about it, but that was hard enough before BeeBee’s mom left. Now, she… still talks to me, I guess, but not like she used to. So I can’t help worrying that something’s going to happen to her that I could have protected her from if I’d just been a bit harsher.” Poe squinted at Rey. “Does that make any sense?”</p><p>            She nodded, and her heart went out to him; God, he loved his daughter so much. “It does. Even though I know you know this, I feel like I should point out that BeeBee is absolutely going to get into trouble that you could have protected her from, but that’s sort of what becoming an adult is, yeah?”</p><p>            Poe laughed and shook his head before downing the rest of his beer in one go. “Don’t remind me.”</p><p>            “But I’ll also say,” Rey added, “that wherever she’s at with dating, with <em>whomever</em> she’s dating—” Poe mouthed <em>whomever</em> at her in bewilderment, but she rolled her eyes and kept going. “—you’ll hear about it before anything happens that you need to be worried about. She cares about you. She wants to keep you in the loop.”</p><p>             “Well that’s something.” Poe tilted his head at her. “You really like hanging out with her, don’t you?”</p><p>            “Yeah,” she told him, almost certain that this had to be a trick question of some sort.</p><p>            He propped his chin in his hand. “You genuinely like hanging out with her.”</p><p>            “I genuinely think she’s really cool.”</p><p>            “Huh.” Poe looked up into the distance thoughtfully. “You know, good for her, I like that kid.”</p><p>            Rey couldn’t help laughing. “I’ve noticed.”</p><p>            “You’ve noticed,” Poe echoed, his eyes meeting hers as he considered this. “What does that mean, exactly?”</p><p>            At once, Rey felt as though she had somehow said too much, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop now. Finishing off her own beer, she set the can back down on the table as she told him, “Same way I can see how much she loves you. You guys loosen up around each other.”</p><p>            “Three days,” he told her. “You’ve noticed that in three days?”</p><p>            “Mhm.”</p><p>            “Huh.”</p><p> </p><p>--</p><p> </p><p>            Somehow, they found themselves lying on the floor together, their second beers half-drunk and forgotten on the coffee table above them. Poe had crawled over to the mini-fridge by his desk to grab bottles of water for them both. He’d ended up beside Rey to deliver hers, but then he’d just… stayed, which neither of them had commented on but which Rey was viscerally aware of.</p><p>            Particularly once they’d laid down – again, <em>somehow</em> – and found themselves shoulder-to-shoulder, comparing grad school experiences.</p><p>            “My friends and I used to study at this bar,” Rey told him, straining to remember the name. “Whatchamacallit Nevin’s? It was not a great place to do work, but I don’t think any of us <em>really</em> wanted to be working in the first place.”</p><p>            “Everything you’re saying is giving me so much confidence in social workers,” Poe said with a laugh.</p><p>            Rey sighed. “Plenty of people <em>do</em> want to be social workers, alright, and they’re really fucking good at it. I just think we all found each other in our cohort because we <em>didn’t</em> want to be, not really. I don’t think a single one of us is practicing now.” She turned her head to look at him. “Did you always feel good about being a lawyer? Once you decided to go to law school.”</p><p>            “Yeah, I actually did.” He considered the ceiling thoughtfully. “BeeBee’s mom didn’t want me to. By the time I was thinking about it seriously, tons of lawyers couldn’t get a job, and she thought it was a bad bet. Which it was, I guess.”</p><p>            “Seems like it was a good bet to me,” she offered.</p><p>            Poe’s lips quirked up. “Just because it worked out doesn’t mean it was a good bet. Just like how good bets don’t work out all the time. Was social work a good bet?”</p><p>            Rey felt her mouth go dry, thinking of how Ben had pushed her toward it just because she’d had a reasonable amount of fun doing a psychology major. “Some people thought it was.”</p><p>            “There you go, then.”</p><p>            He turned his head to look at her, too, and something about his smile changed at once; Rey saw a question in his eyes that she couldn’t quite articulate to herself, not when her mind was also muddled by her lingering buzz and by thoughts of the ‘good bets’ she’d made in her life.</p><p>            She wondered whether this – whether staying with BeeBee, whether drinking with Poe in the basement – would count as a good bet, and she found that she couldn’t have cared less.</p><p>            “I don’t think I’ve thanked you in the past few hours,” she told him. “For letting me stay here.”</p><p>            “Happy to have you,” Poe told her. “You’re… y’know, you’re good people.”</p><p>            Neither of them spoke, but the question in Poe’s eyes hung between them, making Rey’s heartbeat faster and her breathing more shallow.</p><p>            One moment, she was hyper-aware of their breathing, in sync, and his hand, settled on the floor between them and just barely grazing her thigh.</p><p>            The next moment, they were kissing—Rey’s hands at Poe’s neck, her fingers curled into his hair as her thumbs grazed his jaw; Poe had himself rolled over onto his side at once, leaning on his elbow above her so that he could kiss her more deeply.</p><p>            He smoothed his thumb over her cheekbone, smiling against her lips—a smile that turned into a laugh as Rey slid her hands down and grabbed his hips, silently urging him to reposition himself above her. One of his knees settled between her legs, and as he found this new balance, Rey fumbled for his neck again, desperately pulling him closer so that she could kiss him harder.</p><p>            Rey groaned into his mouth as she abruptly felt his hand trailing across her abdomen underneath her tee-shirt; his fingers drifted across her stomach, her ribs, reaching her breasts, where he smoothed his thumb in slow, patient circles for what felt like eons before finally grazing her nipple and making her arch toward him.</p><p>            Deeply exasperated that Poe was still fully dressed, Rey tugged at the shoulder of his shirt, telling him, “Get this off.”</p><p>            “Bossy,” he said, amused as he quickly sat up to pull his shirt off. He ducked down to kiss her again even as Rey’s eyes traveled over his torso, from the chain around his neck to the faint trail of black and grey hair from his belly button to his waistband.</p><p>            They might have kissed like that for an eternity or two, their hands running across each other’s skin as they made out hungrily, with a sort of verve that Rey hadn’t had for kissing since college.</p><p>            And then Poe slid his hand lower, tucking into the waistband of Rey’s pajama pants. She let out an involuntary gasp even before he touched her, her mind racing at the thought that <em>God she was so wet,</em> and <em>God she wanted him so bad,</em> and <em>God she couldn’t believe this was happening</em>.</p><p>            “Can I—” he began, his fingers lingering over her underwear—her very damp underwear.</p><p>            “God, yes,” Rey told him, shifting her pelvis to press against his fingers.</p><p>            Poe smiled and pushed her underwear aside.</p><p>            She ground against his fingers, arching her back slightly and letting out a soft gasp as Poe trailed his mouth along her jaw and down her neck. “I think I was in high school the last time I did this,” she told him.</p><p>            “Oh, that’s unfortunate,” he breathed. He nibbled at her jaw, making her groan. “Fingerbanging is severely underrated.”</p><p>            Feeling a little silly as she did so – and no, it certainly wasn’t because Ben hated talking during sex – Rey asked, “Why?” Her voice thin, her mind mostly on Poe’s fingers inside her and his thumb on her clit.</p><p>            “Because.” Poe’s fingers stilled, and he stopped kissing Rey, settling his forehead against hers to look in her eyes. “I get to watch you come apart underneath me, and then fuck you and see it all over again.”</p><p>            Just for a fraction of a second, Rey could have sworn she was going to come right then.</p><p>            Instead, she kissed him, hard.</p><p>            She grew increasingly breathless as he shifted his legs and she felt his erection against her thigh; as he swept the shoulder of her shirt aside so that he could suck at her skin where no one could see; as he whispered, “I don’t think anyone’s ever looked as beautiful as you do right now,” and she <em>believed</em> him. In her pajamas, her hair a mess, and she believed him.</p><p>            Rey could feel herself about to come and she groped for his free hand, settled on the floor by her head. She found his wrist and she gripped it tight, just in time to say, “Poe, I’m—” And it took everything in her to keep quiet, letting out only whimpers and a long, breathless gasp as her walls fluttered around his fingers.</p><p>            Poe kissed her through the aftershocks of her orgasm, and Rey felt warm, happy, sated, but she also felt his erection still pressing against her, and with it she could feel desire beginning to pool in her gut again.</p><p>            “Can we go upstairs?” he asked against her lips.</p><p>            “Upstairs?” she echoed.</p><p>            “Yeah, I think the floor just isn’t the best bet for my knees.” Poe pressed several soft kisses to Rey’s cheek. “And I know my sofa’s right there, but a nice, big bed seems like a great idea.”</p><p>             Rey ran her hand through his hair, smiling. “Okay. For your knees.”</p><p>            “It’s not just because of my knees, Rey,” he told her as he helped her up.</p><p>            “For your mid-30s knees.” She began to climb the stairs, Poe trailing behind her.</p><p>            “Hey.” He spun Rey around, looking up at her because of the angle. At the smile on her face, he grabbed her neck and pulled her down, kissing her soft and slow.</p><p>            Then, letting her go gently, Poe said, “Not just my knees.”</p><p>            “Not just your knees,” Rey allowed.</p>
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